The concept of God is incoherent. Discuss

by daryankk (student)

AS and A Level Religious Studies & Philosophy

Daryan Omar Philosophy

The concept of God is incoherent

Omniscience is one of the attributes accredited to god in natural theology; which means that god is all knowing from the Latin ‘omni’ meaning all and ‘scientia’ knowing. When ascribed to god it is meant that god knows everything and it can be considered his perfection that he knows everything. In the Bible it says, ‘even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, though knowest it altogether’ (Psalm 139:4). Therefore we can gather that believers of Christianity and other classic theistic religions believe this. However a problem rises internally from this assertion; if god is all knowing, then how can we, as humans have any sort of notion designated as free will if he already knows what we are to do? From the aforementioned quote from the bible, one can see that it mentions, god knows what one will say before it is actually said; before the word is in my tongue or the thought in my brain or an action I undertake, god knows the aftermath, thus I can see that I must have no free will, as my future is predetermined.

Omnipotent another accredited attribute of god is again from the Latin ‘omni’: all and ‘potens’: power. Omnipotent refers to god’s ability of doing anything as he has all power, hence, all-powerful. This gives birth to further more incoherencies, as there are many things that god cannot perform. God cannot create a rock which he cannot fashion a rock which he is unable to elevate, and if he can create this rock, then he can’t elevate the rock as it is a rock which is too heavy for him to lift. Therefore we have discovered things in which he cannot do; ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

The incoherencies I have prior to this mentioned were both internally incoherent, there are also mutual incoherencies. Transcendent which is another attribute of god means, that god stands outside of time and space altogether and he is far away. Immanent another ascribed attribute of god is that he is a personal god who is very close to his world, this is well demonstrated by a quote from the Quran, (this is referring to god)‘closer to man than his jugular vein’, this manifests how close the relationship described by immanent is. However one can see a clear stark contradiction between these two, if god is to be very close then he needs to be active in the physical world, but god is said to be metaphysical as he’s not in time and space, so how can he be in both which is illogical and irrational. This again shows that god’s attributes are incoherent.

Eternal is another attribute of god, which means that god has no beginning or end as he is not in time but stands outside of time altogether so he cannot age or die. However this is incompatible with the omnipotent attribute as an omnipotent god needs to be able to act within time to act upon on the world, such as making it. So if god does act in time then he will be subjected to time so he will have a beginning and end so he cannot be both eternal and omnipotent as he will need to be in time to create our universe.